Midnight Rambler_ A Novel Of Suspense Part 4

"You mean detective jobs that you don't want to talk about."

Most of the work I did these days was helping understaffed police forces around the state find missing kids. It was my specialty, and the departments paid me under the table for my services, not wanting my name to appear on any internal doc.u.ments.

"That's right," I said.

"Oh c.r.a.p, look at the time," my daughter said. "I've got to run.

Love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too."

A cold beer was calling me as I walked into the Sunset's horseshoe-shaped bar. Sitting at the bar were the same seven sunburned rummies who had been there since I started renting my room. I called them the Seven Dwarfs, since it was rare to see any of them standing upright. Sonny, the multi tattooed, multi pierced, shaven-headed bartender, sauntered over.

"Nice suit," Sonny said. "You getting married or laid out?"

"I was in court," I said.

"All those traffic tickets finally catch up with you?"

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Peace, love, and understanding. Barring that, a good b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

Sonny was an ex-con and loved to get under my skin. Because of his record, he legally shouldn't have been tending bar, just as I shouldn't have been doing private jobs for the police. Knowing each other's secret had formed a special bond between us.

"What do you want?" I repeated.

"A woman has been calling for you," Sonny said. "She sounded hysterical, said she needed to talk to you. Sounds like a booty call."

"What's her name?"

He started to wipe the bar with a dirty rag. "I put it in the till."

"You going to get it for me?"

"What's it worth to you?"

Sonny was going to end up back in prison if someone didn't straighten him out. I dropped my voice. "A punch in the face-that's what it's worth."

"You'd hit me in front of all these customers?"

"If I ask them, they'll probably hold you down."

The loopy grin left Sonny's face. He got a slip of paper from the till and slapped it on the bar. I read the name printed on it and felt myself shudder. Julie Lopez. Six months earlier, I had helped Julie come to grips with a loss that no one should have to bear. I hadn't seen her since, knowing that my presence would only open deep wounds.

I walked outside and punched her number into my cell phone. Julie answered immediately, her voice riddled with grief.

"It's Jack Carpenter," I said. "What's wrong?"

"The police found Carmella," she wailed.

"Where?"

"In my backyard!"

My head started to spin, and I leaned against the building and tried to compose myself. What Julie was saying couldn't be true. Carmella Lopez was murdered by Simon Skell, who made her disappear just the way he made seven other young women disappear. Of all the places he might have put Carmella's body, Julie's backyard couldn't be one of them.

"What are the police saying?"

"They think Ernesto did it."

"Is Ernesto there with you?"

"The police arrested him and took him away."

"Did you call a lawyer?"

"I ain't got no money. You've got to help me. I don't know what to do."

My head would not stop spinning. The police were wrong. I told myself that if I went to Julie's house I would get to the truth of the matter.

"I'm coming right now," I said.

"Hurry," she begged me.

Dania Beach was separated from the mainland by a short steel bridge. I raced across it and soon was on 595, driving toward the western reaches of the county. The sky was a murderous black, and large drops of rain pelted my windshield. I was heading into a storm, but I didn't slow down.

CHAPTER SIX.

I parked at the end of Julie Lopez's driveway, my wipers furiously beating back the rain. The neighborhood had always been marginal but had slipped further since my last visit, with cars parked on lawns and black security bars on most windows. parked at the end of Julie Lopez's driveway, my wipers furiously beating back the rain. The neighborhood had always been marginal but had slipped further since my last visit, with cars parked on lawns and black security bars on most windows.

Two police cruisers were parked in front of me. The cops were not going to be happy to see me, but it was a free country. I told Buster to lie down, and he shot me a disapproving look. Aussies are bred for herding, and my dog would have liked nothing better than to spend every waking moment by my side.

I got out and within seconds was soaked to the bone. I trudged up the driveway to the wooden privacy fence that enclosed Julie's backyard. When I stepped through the gate, my feet went ankle-deep in water. If lightning hit nearby, I would be history, yet I continued to slosh ahead. Four uniformed cops and a plainclothes detective were huddled in the backyard. They were looking at something, and I wanted to see what it was.

Carmella Lopez had been my last case as a cop. She and her sister were both prost.i.tutes. Carmella turned tricks in a ma.s.sage parlor, Julie through a live-in pimp named Ernesto. When Carmella went missing one day, Julie called and asked me to find her. I took the case and during my investigation stumbled across Simon Skell, whom I linked to Carmella's disappearance as well as to seven other missing women in the s.e.x business. There wasn't much hard evidence, just a lot of circ.u.mstantial threads that pointed to a rampaging sociopath. The district attorney bought my theories and took Skell to trial. The judge threw out everything but Carmella's case, so the DA tried that. We won, and Skell was sent to Starke.

Yellow police tape lay on the gra.s.s. Ignoring it, I sneaked up behind two uniforms and peeked through the gap between their broad shoulders. They were standing beside a coffin-shaped hole. A decomposed woman's body rested at the bottom of the hole. Dressed in a red bikini, she clutched an object between two hands propped on her stomach.

Something in my chest dropped. Even though the woman's face was gone, I knew who it was. Carmella.

Lightning crashed nearby, rocking the ground. None of us flinched. We'd all stood in this s.h.i.t before. I started backing up. This was the last place on earth I should've been. Suddenly a voice roared my name.

"Carpenter!"

Plainclothes detective Bobby Rus...o...b..oke from the group and rushed toward me. The head of Broward Homicide, his meaty Irish face resembled a four-alarm blaze. Around his neck hung a necktie painted to look like a dead fish. It was Russo who'd coined the phrase "My day starts when your day ends."

Russo threw me to the ground and started kicking me. He was out of shape, and the kicks lacked sting. He shouted my name as if he'd already looked into the future and seen what a nightmare I'd created for him and the other detectives who'd helped put Skell away. It was hard to believe that I'd ushered at his wedding and that we were once friends.

The uniforms pulled Rus...o...b..ck. I got in a sitting position and a.s.sessed the damage. Nothing felt broken, and I stood up and faced him.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Russo shouted.

"She called me," I answered.

"Who?"

"Julie Lopez. She called me. What happened?"

"That's none of your business."

"Come on, Bobby. It was my case."

Russo c.o.c.ked his fist as if he was going to take my head off. Instead of throwing the punch, he spoke to one of the uniforms.

"Arrest him."

"On what charge?" I asked incredulously.

Russo pointed at the police tape lying on the ground.

"Trespa.s.sing on a crime scene."

"This is bulls.h.i.t," I said.

"Welcome to my world," Russo said.

The uniform patted me down and handcuffed me. Together we walked down the driveway. He pulled my wallet from my hip pocket, then got into a cruiser and called in my driver's license on his radio. He knew I wasn't wanted for anything, just as Russo knew. They just wanted to hara.s.s me. Another crash of lightning shook the ground.

"I'm going to get killed out here," I yelled.

The uniform's face appeared in the driver's window. His eyes were lifeless, his face the same. I cursed, and saw him flash a smile.

The rain continued to drench me. I had planned to go swimming later, and I told myself that standing in a downpour accomplished the same thing. This was another of my daughter's maxims. I'm supposed to look on the bright side of things.

The uniform took his sweet time, and I let my eyes roam. A cable company repair truck sat on the street with two workers inside. Trenching equipment was in the truck, and I imagined the workers running a line across the backyard and happening upon Carmella's grave.

"Jack, is that you?" Julie Lopez stood inside the open garage, her face ravaged from crying. Shaped like an hourgla.s.s, she wore ragged cutoffs and a Miami Heat athletic shirt.

"Hey, Julie," I said.

"It's Carmella's body, isn't it?" she asked.

I nodded, and Julie stifled a sob. She had clung to the hope that her sister Carmella would turn up alive one day, even though Skell had been put away for her murder. A false hope, but sometimes those are the ones that keep us going.

"They took Ernesto away," Julie said. "What am I going to do, Jack? Will you tell me what I'm going to do?"

During the trial, Simon Skell's defense attorney had tried to paint Ernesto as Carmella's real killer. Ernesto was no angel, but I'd never pegged him for a killer, and neither had any of the homicide detectives who'd worked the case.

"I don't know," I told her.

"Please come inside and talk to me," she said.

"I can't."

"You don't want to talk to me?"

I showed her my cuffed wrists.

"I'm under arrest."

"What did you you do?" do?"

I took a deep breath. My brain was on overdrive trying to come up with a way to tie the body in Julie's backyard to Simon Skell. Only I couldn't make the connection. My case against Skell had just gone up in flames.

"I f.u.c.ked up," I replied.

Julie shut the garage door in my face. My shoulders sagged. As a cop I had never left a stone unturned. When I was hunting for Carmella, I had the sheriff 's office search Julie's property. The backyard was searched several times, including after Simon Skell was arrested. There had been no body.

The uniform climbed out of the cruiser and shoved my wallet into my hip pocket. The look on his face said I checked out. I showed him my handcuffs.

"Let me go, will you?"

"I need to get permission from Russo," the uniform said.

"Come on. I'm going to get struck by lightning."

"It's Russo's call," he said.